Masks Holiday Sale!

In addition to the book, I'll throw in bookmarks and buttons and other goodies.
The coyote mug, however, is mine.

It’s almost Christmas, and I am officially neck-deep in writing Volume 2 and finishing that Christmas surprise story for y’all … so why don’t you guys have some fun without me and buy some cheap books?

That’s right, Pocket Coyote is having its first-ever holiday sale! Through the end of the year, all signed copies of Volume 1 are $15.00 (as compared to $19.48 if you buy direct from the printer). It makes a great gift for the YA reader in your life, or anybody who likes superheroes … or mythology … or sarcasm … or really bad watercolors. I’m all about value.

For those of you who may have forgotten, the 412-page Volume 1 paperback includes not just all 32 chapters of Masks Volume 1, but also an essay about how Masks came to be, a feature on how I did the illustrations, the Hawkins Foundation’s secret files on a bunch of the characters, and an all-new short story, “The Missing,” which takes place between Volumes 1 and 2 and will never be published anywhere else. If you buy the book through Pocket Coyote, it also comes signed and personalized (that means I write in the recipient’s name and the brief message of your choosing—anything that’s unlikely to get me arrested, sued, or punched in the face). Once you’ve ordered, I’ll send you an email asking you for your preferred autograph text. Make sure you spell everybody’s names right; I will copy your spelling precisely, and you will be embarrassed if it’s wrong.

All books ship via U.S. Priority Mail, which means they get there within a couple of days if you live in the continental U.S. Unfortunately, Priority Mail shipping has gone up to $5.30, but if you order two books, I’ll refund your shipping costs on the second one. If you order three or more books, you’ll be the best reader ever and I’ll refund all shipping costs beyond whatever it costs to actually throw the books in the mail. I’ve never had to work this out before because nobody’s ever ordered more than two books at a time from me before; I encourage you to be the first person to give me this problem.

The package will also include a random assortment of Pocket Coyote goodies, including any or all of the following: signed bookmarks, handmade buttons, and goofy sketches I drew in the middle of the night while drinking too much tea. All of these make great stocking stuffers, unless of course I’ve had way too much tea.

That's a penny to show how thick the paperback is. 412 pages! With pictures!

You can order the books here. And whatever you’re celebrating this December, I hope you’ll enjoy having Rae and Trevor over to celebrate with you.

Comic-Con, Ghost Dance, and good news / bad news

Please don’t kill me. I’ve been working on it, honest.

Well, no, actually, I haven’t been working on “Ghost Dance.” I’ve been working on Volume 2, which is more important but less urgent for reasons I’ll explain.

Good news first—“Ghost Dance” will hit the web by Saturday, July 14, during Comic-Con. (I’m going on Sunday this year.) You guys will finally get to meet the Black  Mask and Eagle Eye and thrill to one of their stranger adventures just after the end of World War II. Can I get an excited squee, please?

Less-good news—Volume 2 is running behind schedule, and will be delayed until September. Sorry, guys. It’s turning out a bit more complex than I expected, and life is interfering. More bloggage on that later.

Good news again—I have bookmarks! Two kinds! Here is the artwork for both of them—one featuring Rae and one featuring Trevor. And heeeeeeeere is the text that goes on the back of them, to whet your appetite for Volume 2:

On the Rae bookmark:

There are capes—heroes with powers. There are masks—wannabes with a few tricks. Everyone knows who the real heroes are.

Until now.

Rae Masterson, a.k.a. Merlin, doesn’t let her lack of powers stop her from fighting the good fight. At 17, she’s already saved her city, built a superhero team, and fallen in love with her crimefighting partner, Peregrine. But everyone knows masks live fast, die young, and leave anonymous corpses. Rae’s time is running out.

When Peregrine’s bloody past comes back to haunt him and a long-dead hero suddenly returns to life, Rae must choose between love and survival. To save the world, she must confront her own death. To save Peregrine, she must make a deal with the devil. Can she do it?

And if she does, who will save her?

On the Trevor bookmark:

There are capes—heroes with powers. There are masks—wannabes with a few tricks. Everyone knows who the real heroes are.

Until now.

Trevor Gray, a.k.a. Peregrine, was born to be a hero. Raised as a sidekick, he took up the colors of his missing mentor and now fights on in his name. At 17, he’s built a team of young heroes and fallen in love with his masked partner, Merlin. But death is never far from any mask, and now it’s paid Trevor a visit.

When a last message from his teacher upends his life and a long-lost hero returns from the dead, Trevor must choose between duty and love. To save the world, he must confront his demons. To save Merlin, he must break her heart. Can he do it?

And if he does, who will save him?

Are you excited? I am!

Further good news—I have the most adorable Pocket Coyote buttons known to man. Here’s a photo:

And finally, less-good news—I am not totally sure there’s going to be a blog entry next Monday, because my schedule for next week is absolutely psychotic. I will probably be spending a lot of time on the road for work-related stuff—teaching classes in another city, having meetings, etc. If I can blog from God-knows-where, I will. If I can’t, I won’t. It might not be on Monday, either, because I expect to be completely exhausted from Comic-Con. I will try to get con photos up on this blog and on Pocket Coyote sometime next week for everyone to enjoy, but I won’t be seeing much of my house and you may hear zombie-like groans coming from the depths of the internet. Bear with me, guys.

And while you’re at it, be sure to keep submitting names for our contest to name the coyote!

Name that pup!

I’m feeling lazy. Let’s have a contest!

You guys might remember Rae has a bit of a thing about coyotes—if by “thing” I can mean “massive childhood trauma.” Rae lost her childhood friend, Sam, when her abusive family put her in a car and drove off with her, and Rae was unable to stop the car because she ran into a menacing coyote in the woods that blocked her from cutting off the car’s path. Rae has been creeped out by coyotes ever since, and really doesn’t like them. Late in the first volume of Masks, however, she had to face her fear in the form of her own memories—a spectral coyote that forced her to answer a question in order to rescue Trevor.

Now, I’m not dropping too many spoilers here, but the adorable little coyote at the top of this blog entry will play a small but important role in Volume 2, helping Rae deal with some of that trauma (and providing much-needed cuteness). But I’m having a devil of a time naming him! So whoever can come up with the right name—the one that clicks in my brain and helps me figure him out—will win a signed copy of Masks Volume 1, in either paper or in finished-soon-I-promise ebook form. (Yes, I can sign an ebook. Win the contest and find out how.) The winner will also receive a limited-edition (because I don’t have them made very often) Masks button or two, including the design above—and a handmade Pocket Coyote of your very own, to be named whatever you like. You’ll also be mentioned, by name, in the acknowledgments of Volume 2.

Now, here’s how to enter! Simply leave your suggested coyote pup name in a comment on this blog entry. You may enter as many times as you like, but each name counts as only one entry; if ten people enter the name “Spot” and I choose that name, the first one to suggest it gets the prize. Except I’ve just suggested “Spot,” so that one’s taken now.

Ground rules (also known as “things I won’t even consider, so don’t bother suggesting”):

1. No naughty words. This is a PG-13 site, so the pup won’t be named anything you can’t say twice in a PG-13 movie. Naughty-word suggestions will not make it past the comment moderator to be entered in the contest, so you’d basically be wasting your time.

2. No Wile E. Coyote references. So no Wiley, no Whylee, none of that. In the unlikely event Masks gets famous enough to attract the attention of lawyers, I don’t need Warner Bros. suing me for copyright infringement.

3. No Cervantes jokes (unless they’re really unusually clever). There’s already been a Don Coyote cartoon, so this pup will not be named Don or Dawn or anything of the kind.

4. The pup cannot be named Kirby, or any variation thereof. Sorry, but Amadeus Cho’s coyote pup was named Kerberos, shortened to Kirby, and because I enjoyed the adventures of Kirby and Amadeus, I consider the name permanently taken.

Other than that, the sky’s the limit! I can tell you so far that the coyote is male, and basically orphaned as a pup; Rae will name him, somewhat unwillingly; he will really like eating black licorice; and he will, of course, be more than he appears, including just a bit magical (in the manner of the Masked Rider … whatever manner that is). He’ll also be a bit bitey when he first shows up, with a habit of gnawing on people’s fingers, as young canines tend to do.

I will announce the winner … ehh, pretty much when I’ve got one. But the sooner you suggest your name, the sooner you can win all that lovely loot!

How to make your own MASKS T-shirts (and other stuff too)

Okay, here’s how I put together the T-shirts the stylin’ Masks Posse wore to Comic-Con. These directions tell you how to create the image on a black T-shirt, which is considerably harder than on a white one. All images referenced in this post are available in this Photobucket album.

1. Snag the image of Rae and Trevor holding hands—either full-color or black, white, and red. Save it to your computer.

2. Open it using the GIMP image manipulation freeware (available at http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/The_GIMP/gimp.html)

3. Copy the image (right-click + “Copy”).

4. Open a new image in GIMP of the same dimensions (my version was 4844 x 5358 pixels).

5. From the “Layers” menu, select “Add Alpha Channel.”

6. Also from the “Layers” menu, select “Color to Alpha” and set the color to whatever the background color of your image is. (In my case, it was white.)

7. Paste the Rae-Trevor image onto your new image.

8. Now here’s the tricky and time-consuming and crazy-making part. Using the Eraser tool from the main GIMP toolbox, erase all the parts of the image that aren’t Rae and Trevor. All that uniform white around them? Erase as much of it as you can, keeping as close to their bodies as you can without erasing the figures. You will see a checkerboard pattern emerge as you erase the black. Everywhere you see checkerboard, you will have a transparent image. So erase everything you don’t want to see on a shirt.

9. Save the file as a PNG file, and jump through any hoops GIMP makes you jump through to do that.

10. Go to http://www.cafepress.com/make/custom-t-shirts.

11. Click on whatever T-shirt you want to design. I created this design for a black T-shirt, so I recommend something that comes in black. There are sizing charts and whatall—just pick what you like, click on the shirt, and go to the shirt designer.

12. Upload your image to Cafepress. If it’s too big, go back to GIMP and re-save your image in a smaller size.

13. Add the text to your shirt. I used the Chandler font in a dark red for “MASKS” and in white for “Truth / Justice / Secrets.”

14. Drop your image onto the shirt and pull it around and resize it until it’s where you want it. The pattern will let you center your image, but please note that Rae’s and Trevor’s hands are slightly off-center because Trevor’s throwing arm sticks out a little more on his side. I chose to center their hands over the S in MASKS, and centered the text. Don’t go outside the boundaries of the design area on the shirt. Nothing outside that box will print.

15. When you’re satisfied, click “Done” and order your shirt!

TO DO THIS ON A WHITE SHIRT:

Just upload the image and add the text. No muss, no fuss.

TO MAKE BUTTONS:

The button images are available too. Upload them to either Cafepress or Zazzle.com (the site I used this time around), center and jigger them around until you’ve got what you want, and then order as many buttons as you can stand.

There. You are now the most stylish walking billboard in town!